Over at FiveThirtyEight.com David Wasserman says that
if the GOP wants to win the White House this time around it’s “Rubio
or bust.”I would argue that if the
GOP wants to cut out the self-inflicted cancer that is the Tea Party so they
can once again become a viable national party, they should nominate Ted Cruz
this year and use his defeat in the fall to marginalize him and his ilk on
Capitol Hill. Rubio may well be the most electable Republican this year, but
the deck is clearly stacked against the Republican Oval Office aspirant in 2016
no matter who it is. Losing another election with a supposedly acceptable
mainstream candidate will only increase Ted Cruz’s power on Capitol Hill and
help sustain the Tea Party’s leverage over the party’s sane (though too often
silent) majority.

Hate Ted Cruz? Serving him up in an election he will
lose to Hillary Clinton would be delicious punishment and would have the
additional benefit of helping restore the credibility of the national GOP.If the alternative is Trump, whose nomination
would spell very serious trouble for down ballot Republicans, this seemingly
bitter pill might be more palatable to national Republican insiders.

In a frightening way, the GOP’s long term interests in
Washington might be best served by losing this year’s presidential election.
If they won, regardless of who they put up, it would be very difficult to
resist Tea Party pressure to repeal the 20th Century.If they lose with a so-called “establishment-friendly”
nominee, the leverage of the “wacko
birds” only increases in the GOP.

I think Ted Cruz may make a pretty good fall guy at
this point. He’s a doctrinaire wing nut whose behavior on the campaign trail would
create less difficulty for down ballot Republicans than Trump’s would, and he’s
an asshole whose diminished stature in Washington would be both personally satisfying
and politically useful to his GOP colleagues.